The People's Critic
Film reviews for those who prize brevitySUGAR (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, 2008)
Sugar (5/5) is arguably the best baseball movie ever made, not because it features spine-tingling feats of heroism or salty repartee, but because it intimately contextualizes both the game and the men who play it. Indeed, Miguel “Sugar” Santos is a Dominican pitching prospect, who arrives in the U.S. with hopes of big-league stardom, but soon finds the linguistic isolation and the intense pressure of minor league life hard to bear. Thus co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck flesh out a character of quiet, compelling depth; in doing so, moreover, they bring to light a story that is seldom heard.
GOODBYE SOLO (dir. Ramin Bahrani, 2008)
Set in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Goodbye Solo (PC rating: 4.5/5) tells the story of a genial Senegalese taxi driver, Solo, and his attempts to befriend one of his clients, William–an elderly man, whose melancholic manner and ominous requests convince Solo that he is going to kill himself. As usual, director Ramin Bahrani crafts a sensitive, reflective film, which features characters who are struggling to come to terms with their lives. And though it hardly leaves the viewer with an “answer” per se, it ultimately suggests that, when human tragedy cannot be prevented, it must at least be felt…and thus learned from.
WENDY AND LUCY (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2008)
The story of a young vagrant, whose only apparent hope (a cross-country move to Alaska) is impeded by economic misfortune, Wendy and Lucy (PC rating: 4/5) has been hailed as a “political” film, which realistically chronicles the trials of America’s poor. And, in a sense, that is true: director Kelly Reichardt has stripped the narrative to the bone, focusing chiefly on Wendy’s struggles to endure on a shoestring budget–a doomed endeavor, the film suggests, in a country in which “every man is for himself.” And yet, Wendy and Lucy seems content to treat Wendy and her dog, Lucy, as mere symbols, for it is not so much concerned with where they have been or where they are going as the fact that they are. It stands, then, as an important political reminder, which Reichardt, for all of her artistry, nevertheless fails to convert into a fully human, political story.
THE CLASS (dir. Laurent Cantet, 2008)
If films about teachers do, in fact, constitute a genre, then Laurent Cantet’s The Class (PC rating: 4/5) is an obvious attempt to subvert it. Here there are no against-the-odds comeback stories or maudlin I-couldn’t-have-done-it-without-you climaxes, but, rather, only a gritty, documentary-like look at life in an inner-city middle school in Paris. Cantet achieves this sense of realism by giving only glimpses into the backgrounds of his main characters; thus the focus, indeed, is on life “between the walls” (the film’s French title, Entre les Murs, is purposeful!) and on the ambiguous scenarios that unfold there everyday.
W. (dir. Oliver Stone, 2008)
As an interpretation of the political career of George W. Bush, Oliver Stone’s W. (PC rating: 3.5/5) seems plausible enough: a likable, if not cerebral, scion of a powerful family, who longs not so much for recognition as acceptance, Bush sees his presidency as an opportunity to legitimate both his father’s legacy and the worldview of “good, simple” Americans; that this is enterprise is doomed to fail, the film also implies, is a function of Bush’s naivete, rather than his viciousness. Thus W. is not a straightforward “hatchet piece,” a fact that might surprise Bush’s supporters, even as it rankles his detractors. What it is, however, is a mediocre film, particularly down the stretch, when it begins to resemble a series of ”political skits” featuring the (banally devious) Bush administration, rather than a drama per se.
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)
A movie has achieved greatness when the critic struggles to find its flaws, and No Country for Old Men (PC rating: 5/5) is just such a film. A briskly paced thriller, which somehow manages to find the time for tragicomic reflections on life and death, good and evil, it is surely the Coen brothers’ best work to date–indeed, a kind of crystallization of their unique talent. And the flaws? No Country for Old Men might have worked harder to develop some of its characters, but, even then, its excellent cast (led by Javier Bardem, though anchored by Tommy Lee Jones) locates a surplus of depth in the Coens’ suitably laconic script.
VALKYRIE (dir. Bryan Singer, 2008)
In recent years, World War II films have tended to focus on the horrors of the Holocaust and, only by association, the attitudes of the German people toward such atrocities and toward Nazism in general; some fine films have resulted from this formula (perhaps, vor allem, Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List), but, at the same time, a fuller picture of the rise and fall of the Third Reich has failed to emerge. The promise of Valkyrie (PC rating: 3.5/5) is that it will begin to redress this problem, but, unfortunately, it is not nearly that ambitious. The tale of Claus von Stauffenberg’s valiant, yet doomed, attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler and to coordinate an overthrow of the Nazi regime, Valkyrie is suspenseful almost by default; however, its constricted focus on the so-called “20 July” plot fails to bring Stauffenberg and other resistance leaders to life, as if the film were afraid that three-dimensional characters would just get in the way of its nail-biting premise.
THE VISITOR (dir. Thomas McCarthy, 2008)
The thread connecting Thomas McCarthy’s first film, The Station Agent, and his second, The Visitor (PC rating: 4/5), is that of loneliness overcome–indeed, not just overcome, but slowly (in The Visitor, perhaps a bit too slowly) broken down and melted away. Of course, there is also a political message in The Visitor, which casts light on some of the trials facing immigrants in post-9/11 New York City. However, McCarthy avoids lapsing into ideological commentary, realizing that, in the end, human beings are not brought together by way of formal dialogue but, rather, through recognizing the ground they already share–in this case, the love of music and the need for friendship and charity.
RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (dir. Jonathan Demme, 2008)
A cinematic tease, Rachel Getting Married (PC rating: 3.5/5) takes a promising first half and excellent performances by Anne Hathaway (as Kym, who is battling a drug addiction, not to mention the mistakes of her past) and Debra Winger (as Abby, her aloof mother) and slowly but surely overshadows them with an almost comically pretentious wedding. Indeed, the two elements coexist well enough at first–the wedding festivities serving as the occasion for Kym’s uneasy reunion with her family–but eventually the roles are reversed, with Kym’s troubles providing justification for a seemingly endless array of nuptial scenes, from sung wedding vows (featuring lyrics by Neil Young!) to dancing grandmothers to, yes, a parade of revelers who seem to have emanated from the Cordão do Bola Preta. It is clear that the wedding is supposed to signify something (an image of post-ideological America? a foretaste of the eschaton?), but in the end it just detracts from an otherwise compelling story.
THE NAMESAKE (dir. Mira Nair, 2007)
An inter-generational story, which also moves between settings in Kolkata and New York City, The Namesake (PC rating: 4.5/5) might have let its reflections on cultural identity overshadow its attention to character. Fortunately, however, it avoids this tempation, and the result is an effortlessly poignant film, which embeds its sociological observations in a gentle narrative about the Ganguli family and their attempts to adapt to American culture without sacrificing their Indian roots. The ostensible protagonist here is Gogol, a second generation Indian-American, who is torn between his family’s heritage and the allure of success in his birth country; still, it is Gogol’s parents who make up the core of The Namesake, displaying the quiet dignity of a couple who appreciate the opportunities of their new home, even as they long to return to their native land.
